Basic Trope: A child character is suddenly older without explanation.
- Straight: In the first episode we're introduced to Alice, who is a 10-year-old in elementary school. One season later and Alice is now a 16-year-old in high school.
- Exaggerated: Alice goes from 10 years old to 50 years old.
- Downplayed: Alice goes from 10 years old to 12 years old. While it doesn't make perfect sense, the age gap isn't as big and Alice looks pretty much the same.
- Justified: Alice has a biological condition that makes her age rapidly.
- Inverted: Alice goes from 10 years old to 5 years old. For some reason...
- Subverted:
- We're introduced to a girl that looks like she could be an aged-up Alice, but she's actually just a friend of Alice's teenaged brother, Charlie.
- It's eventually revealed that some time has passed between the first season and the next season.
- 16-year-old Alice is a dream.
- Double Subverted:
- ...which is what we're led to believe until their parents come into the room and call the girl Alice.
- But still not enough time for Alice to somehow be a teenager.
- The 16-year-old Alice is a dream WMG has been Jossed.
- Parodied: With every scene change, Alice's age changes too, going from a young adult to a baby to a 100-year-old woman in a wheelchair on life support.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Alice remains the same age.
- Enforced:
- The child actress playing Alice left the show, so the producers aged Alice up to avoid going through the trouble of finding another actress who looks similar to her.
- The child playing Alice got older in between seasons and there was no possible replacement.
- Lampshaded: "Wait, since when was Alice 16? Wasn't she just a kid last week?"
- Invoked: Charlie finds Alice annoying, so he gets her to run away from home and come back in a few years, hoping that she'll return as a sensible and mature teenager.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Alice's parents are planning to live abroad and ask Alice if she wants to go with them. She says she'd rather stay put because if she leaves, she'll be a teenager when they inevitably return back home, and Alice likes being a kid.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "Kids in TV shows sure age quickly..."
- Implied: Alice is a background character who is constantly seen cycling around the neighbourhood on her pink bike. After a few episodes, the girl on the pink bike seems older, although it's never outright said that she's Alice.
Back to Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome
